Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward, Neil J. Wilkof, and Merpel. Nicola Searle is currently on sabbatical. Read, post comments and participate! E-mail the Kats here

The team is joined by GuestKats Mirko Brüß, Rosie Burbidge, Nedim Malovic, Frantzeska Papadopolou, Mathilde Pavis, and Eibhlin Vardy

Friday, 3 July 2015

Good day for maple leaf growers? Well, maybe not
quite, but the IPKat's friends at the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO) have just told him in UPOV
Notification 117 that Canada has ratified the International Convention
for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the UPOV Convention),
which comes into effect for Canada on 19 July. A full list of countries that
have signed up for this convention can be found here.

Also from WIPO, but this time from our
Katfriends in WIPO's Communications Division, comes a request to remind
everyone of a couple of things: (i) last week saw the first edition of the
new WIPO
Wire newsletter, which aims to help busy WIPO-watchers stay
abreast of what the organisation is doing, with a short-and-sweet, fortnightly
selection of news, features and resources [this Kat understands that
the WIPO folk warmly welcome feedback on this initiative from the IP community,
so don't be shy to tell them what you think]; (ii) in case you have
forgotten, WIPO has revamped its entire suite of newsletter offerings,
from the specialist updates on global IP services, to news on various law,
policy and cooperation-related programmes. Details are available from a new
mailing platform, which makes it easier for users to sign up and manage their
preferences. This new central
subscription page provides an at-a-glance overview of all the
different newsletters on offer.

Just a red herring -- or the ultimate truth? "The
Unitary Patent Package, the Court of Justice, Union Law & a further
response to the academics" is the latest salvo in the battle between
respected Dutch patent practitioner Wouter Pors (who
heads Bird & Bird's Netherlands IP practice) and the equally respected
and somewhat more numerous collection of the good and great from Europe's
academic and practising intellectual property community, spearheaded by Alain Strowel.
The original shot in this battle, arguing that the new patent package
was setting a dangerous precedent since the EU Member States were stripping the
Union of its powers, can be read here.
Wouter responded here,
to the effect that the critics had got it all wrong. "Oh no we haven't",
they responded here.
Dutch IP magazine Berichten IE then asked Wouter to
write his surrejoinder, which you can read here.

Ukraine police in big clean-up. Once upon
a time it was money-laundering that everyone was worried about. Now, it seems,
something quite different is being "laundered" -- leading brands of
washing powder and shampoo. According to anarticle in
the most recent Petosevic Eastern Europe news letter, authorities from the city
of Chernivtsi recently uncovered an illegal production plant where two
individuals, having purchased cheap washing powder in bulk through wholesale
distributors, repackaged it in plastic buckets weighing 5.6 kg apiece for sale
online as a popular consumer brand. The police raided the premises, where they
found 6.7 tons of washing powder, not to mention 3,800 shampoo bottles
and 210 disposable razor packages. Criminal proceedings were then launched
under Article 229 of the Criminal Code, which makes it an offence to trade
unlawfully through the use of trade marks, brand names, and appellations of
origin. Penalties range from fines of 7,000-11,000 euro to the seizure and
destruction of counterfeit goods, equipment and materials used for their
production. Says Merpel, while lighter sentences may be appropriate for
people who have a previously clean criminal record, it is possible that the
courts may wish to impose a heavier fine in the hope that it will have a detergent deterrent
effect on others.

The sight of one hand being registered ..
In "Should EU Courts know national statute law and case law? A
comparative reprise", guest Kat Alberto Bellan discussed reactions
to the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Case
C-530/12 POHIM v National Lottery Commission, [explained
in his earlier Katpost here] in
which that court set aside a decision of the General Court that had effectively
allowed the cancellation of National Lottery's Community trade mark on the
basis of evidence which was plainly fake but which was presumptively valid
under domestic Italian law. This palpable nonsense has now finally been laid to
rest since, on Tuesday, in Case
T-404/10 RENV the General Court to which these proceedings was
remitted has nullified the cancellation decision of the Board of Appeal --
which was made a full five years ago, following the application for
cancellation that was made nearly eight years ago. What a shame that it has
taken so long to reach this point, adds Merpel, who hopes that this decision
will not be subject to a further appeal.

German IP blogs. A reader whom this Kat
presumes to be German, or at least German-speaking (though his written English
is excellent) has contacted the Kat family to ask if they have any
recommendations as to the best German-language intellectual property blogs. This
Kat is not a talented modern linguist and, while he has taken an active
interest in learning what his German colleagues have been thinking and writing,
this has always been on the basis that their blogs have been in the English
language. Accordingly, readers are invited to post, using the comments
facility below, recommendations of German-language IP blogs -- whether from
Germany, Austria, Switzerland or anywhere else that German is spoken. For the
convenience of readers, it would be appreciated if respondents could specify
the area(s) of IP covered by recommended blogs if that information is not
apparent from the title. Thanks!

Hero withconservative leanings

Hero status conferred.Mike Weatherley,
Vice Chairman at the Motion Picture
Licensing Company, former Conservative Member of Parliament
and till recently the IP
adviser to British prime minister David Cameron, has been awarded
the Hero Award from the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI)
for his impact on consumer protection while in parliament. He recently
campaigned in support of the work of local trading standards authorities in
tackling intellectual property crime and supported the Police Intellectual
Property Crime Unit (PIPCU)
and managed to help squeeze an additional £3 million out of the Home Secretary,
Prime Minister and Intellectual Property Office in order to secure PIPCU's
future until 2017. Well done Mike, says this Kat, who rather liked his Rock
the House competition -- an imaginative and not unsuccessful
attempt to sensitise British parliamentarians to the importance of fostering a
live and growing musical culture based on the existence of fair and enforceable
intellectual property rights.

Around the weblogs. PatLit carries two pieces of
interest: one, by Michael Thesen, addresses patent
claim construction in Germany following the Bundesgerichtshof
ruling in Rotorelemente. The other, by Jeremy, looks at a recent
judicial comment about the absence of a "long-felt want"
argument in a patent obviousness action and asks whether that rule of thumb
isn't really a bit obsolete. Elsewhere, the 1709 Blog picks up a light
and readable article by Lucinda Hawksley, a direct descendant of
Charles Dickens, on her celebrated forebear's contribution to copyright law
reform.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

not in German language, but German nonetheless, the GermanIP blog (http://germanip.blogspot.nl/) used to publish some interesting patent related news, until it apparently made the fatal mistake of publishing an April fools joke in February ("EPO to revise strike regulations" lol!)

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